


In Space No One Can Hear You But Yourself

by TUNiU



Series: Tardigrades are Extremophiles [4]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Medical Inaccuracies, Outer Space, Pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:07:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27323212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: Paul survives exposure to space, twice.
Series: Tardigrades are Extremophiles [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1991209
Comments: 1
Kudos: 34





	In Space No One Can Hear You But Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> ....you know when you have a fic idea that circulates over and over in your mind and just won't leave?.... I have a creeping suspicion I'll be coming back to this one day, but for now: enjoy.

Paul always knew there was no sound in space. Years and years ago, he'd learned the mechanics of vacuum and sound waves. Sound waves needed to propagate through a physical medium, and the vacuum of space had nothing in it. Therefore sound could not travel. Therefore it was silent.

That was a lie.

As he drifted away from Discovery's cargo bay: untethered, unprotected, Paul heard his own heartbeat and the popping of the water molecules on his tongue. As he spun around and around--his body given torque from the initial force of the cargo bay's rapid depressurization--each beat of his heart vibrated through the veins nearest his eustachian tubes. Those vibrations continued their journey through his jaw bone and made the tiniest bones in his ear vibrate. 

His vision faded, and his lungs shredded under the negative pressure. Paul heard his heart race and then slow. There was no touch from skin bloated out by the outward pressure his own body created, unencumbered by any atmospheric counter pressure. There was no smell with no air; no taste from a boiled tongue. In the darkness of his own body, Paul heard his heartbeat.

And he continued hearing it. 

It was so slow. But he just kept hearing it, like a beacon: a tiny signpost through the pain.

He counted. Each beat was life. He only existed for the beats; because of the beats

* * *

The time loop restarted.

* * *

Slowly Michael became aware of a hard surface under her cheek and the incessant chime of the shuttle alarm. She opened her eyes and saw Paul sitting in the co-pilot seat next to her. Blood streaked through his hair and down his ear. He sat tapping at the barely responding cracked console. 

He turned to her, and cautioned, "careful," even as she didn't listen and sat up. She flinched away at the pain. There was a medical kit laid open near her head.

Whip fast he scanned her with the tricorder, and stated, "I said careful."

"How bad is it?" she asked.

"Well," he read the screen. "The autodoc says you have a concussion, cracked clavicle, fractured nose and possible spinal injury....also cancer, andorian shingles, and an overactive prostate."

Michael just stared at him.

"Don't give me that eyebrow, the systems are scrambled from the impact. Earlier it was telling me you had appendicitis."

"Impact, yes." Now, she remembered. The three of them were on a short flight to investigate the remains of the Hobus system. She whipped her head to the back of the shuttle cabin, "Lt. Thomas?" she asked, even as she saw the flickering force shield several feet behind her. It stood there protecting her and Paul from the massive hull breach at the far end of the shuttle. Michael saw a vast swath of space through the torn open metal. There was no Lt. Thomas on the shuttle anymore.

Paul looked away. "That's the beginning of the bad news," he said.

Michael made an enquiring sound.

"Power flow is fluctuating, which means sooner or later, that," he pointed to the force field, "is going to fail. The repair needs to be done in junction 47, which is," again he pointed to the force field, "on that side." He reached behind him and unlatched a supply locker. The door swung open. Inside was a pair of environmental suits that could be worn in space. Due to their nature, each suit was designed for a narrow range of body sizes. 

Paul stood up, walked the one step to the locker and took down a helmet. The face shield was cracked and missing a tiny piece. "This is mine."

She stared at it. “Where's the repair kit?”

He grimaced and pointed again to the forcefield and the rest of the ship that lay beyond. He sat back down in his seat heavily.

Her mind raced. Fragments of implications and inferences from the past several weeks of knowing Paul collated in her mind until she said, “you can survive vacuum.”

“Well, I’ve survived everything else that's happened to me so far.”

“No. You’re too calm,” Michael observed. “You know you can survive space exposure. But the only time you could have learned is during the time loops.”

He lifted his chin and his arms folded around his chest. “Sometimes I was in the wrong spot when the ship exploded,” Paul said.

“I was not implying anything,” she backtracked.

“Right because I only said I would throw myself out an airlock,” he scoffed. “You don't...never mind. Yes. I can survive space without a suit, and frankly I was hoping it would take longer to convince you because it sucks, it's painful, and I was really hoping to have more time to prepare myself.”

“We can wait as long as you like,” she offered kindly, lying.

The forcefield flickered to punctuate her lie.

Stubbornly, Paul stared out the viewscreen for several seconds, his face scrunching up as though he were arguing with himself. He pinched the top of his nose.

“Fine.” He waved his hand at the storage locker, inviting Michael to retrieve her suit.

She did so. Paul helped her into the pieces. Designed as they were for an emergency, the environmental suits could be put on alone. However, it was reassuring to have a second person checking the seals.

Paul squeezed her helmet anxiously between his hands, so tight he knuckles turned white. The helmet was designed for pressure differentials and so remained unharmed. Unlike his own helmet which had smashed into the locker wall during the shuttle’s impact with a fractured piece of planet.

“The repair kit will be in the underseat bulkhead,” he told her. “Try not to take too long.” He placed the helmet over her head, squishing down her tall hair. Then he twisted it against the neck ring until the seal clicked. He blinked twice, nodded, then nodded again. 

He turned and sat in his seat, drawing the safety belt up and over his lap. It clicked into the receiver on the other side of the seat. He yanked on the fabric to make sure it held him tight. Beside him, Michael did the same in her own seat. Then he took three of the deepest breaths, letting all his air out each time. The last time, he held his absence of breath as he made eye contact with Michael.

She tapped a sequence of keys on the console and the forcefield disappeared. All the air blew past Paul, sucking him backwards even as he stayed latched to his seat.

Sound vanished.

His heartbeat echoed in his head.

Gravity stayed, unlike last time. He felt his head fall back against the seat’s headrest. His vision faded. His lungs burned. His heart beat slowed.

He counted.

One….

….Two….

……...Three….

* * *

" Emergency transport to sickbay!” a voice said over the comms. 

Every doctor and nurse in sickbay grabbed their tools. They left the large open space in the center of the room clear for the incoming signal. The transporter scan lines glowed and screamed, pixelating two people into existence on the white floor. Once they were fully resolved, Michael let Paul’s body down from her lap, gently laying him on the floor. Then she stood up and backed away to get clear of everyone that needed to work.

“What happened?” Hugh asked as he kneeled at Paul’s side, medical tricorder in hand. He scanned, but already he could see the burst blood vessels underneath Paul’s fair skin.

“He was exposed to space,” Michael answered and took off her environmental helmet.

“How long?” Hugh looked down at his screen, but the data wasn't complete.

“Fifteen minutes.”

For a moment, Hugh froze. The scan data loaded in his handheld screen. Heart rate was beyond low, yet still existent. There was no respiration. Paul’s body showed injuries consistent with exposure to vacuum. Already the air pressure aboard the ship was destroying gas bubbles that had formed in his blood. He waved to a couple of waiting nurses and they lifted Paul onto a biobed. 

In quick order, they had him stripped, intubated, wiped down, and resting under a regenerator within a pressure field at a quarter of the ship's atmospheric pressure. 

It was hours before they could take the respirator out and raise the pressure to ship’s normal, and hours more until Paul showed signs of waking up. The alarm over Paul’s bed brought Hugh out of his barely resting stupor. Mentally exhausted Hugh walked over to the bed to check on the screen. Paul’s stress markers were increasing. He was waking up.

Hugh rested his hand on Paul’s shoulder and said, “Paul? Paul can you open your eyes?”

Paul frowned in response.

“Paul?”

His lips moved but Hugh couldn't make out the words.

“Can you open your eyes, just for a minute?”

“I lost count,” Paul whispered, his eyes still closed.

The sentence made no sense to Hugh, though it may still have been a coherent thought. “You lost count of what?” he asked, needing more confirmation of Paul’s mental faculties. The computer didn't show any brain damage from his extended lack of oxygen, which would be such a medical miracle Hugh was disinclined to believe the machine.

Paul opened his eyes. They were glassy and barely focused on Hugh. “My heartbeat,” he answered.

“Well, you’ve had a lot of them.”

“Nnnnn,” Paul argued but fell asleep before he could even finish the word.

Hugh looked up to the screen on the wall reflexively. The scan showed Paul was just sleeping.

Hugh returned to his seat at his desk. He rested his elbows on the table top and buried his face in his hands. He really didn't know how much more of this he could take. It seemed like it was every month that Paul was in sickbay with injuries that should have killed a human, and every month Hugh was the one to patch him. There was a reason it was unethical for doctors to treat their families. When Paul woke up, he would tell him he was transferring his care back to Tracy Pollard. As it should have stayed from when Doctor Pollard arrived after Hugh’s temporary death.

He just couldn't take it anymore. It was breaking his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> At times, this is a shameless rip-off of Farscape's episode The Flax. 
> 
> And then Hugh had to get in some angst. 
> 
> *shrug*
> 
> Also, 47 reference ftw. And I needed a place with a lot of debris so I chose the Hobus system, though who knows how spread out that cloud of Romulus bits would be after 700 years.


End file.
